To mentor is to serve as a trusted counselor or teacher interested in academically or socially nurturing a less experienced individual, often in an occupational setting, but increasingly in community settings as a way to reach youth. Youth mentor programs are often designed for disadvantaged youth, or available only in schools or other government programs. Tampa Bay Mentor Match seeks to bring mentoring into common use in our everyday communities.

The best mentors combine professional competence, experience, the ability to communicate, and most importantly the ability to listen and support.

Some facts about the benefits of mentoring:

A study by Proctor and Gamble of mentoring in Cincinnati schools showed that young people with mentors were more likely to:

• Stay in school
• Attend classes
• Be less disruptive when attending class
• Get better grades
• Go to college

In 2005,the MENTOR organization conducted the second Mentoring in America poll to assess the current state of mentoring in the U.S. While the full report provides an in-depth summary and explanation of the findings, highlights include the following:

• 3,000,000 adults have formal, one-to-one mentoring relationships with young people; an increase of 19% since 2002.
• 96% of existing mentors would recommend mentoring to others.
• 44 million American adults who are not currently mentoring a young person would seriously consider it.
• While the average mentoring relationship lasts 9 months, 38% last at least one year.

While formal mentors work with the help of an organization or structured program, informal mentors do so without any support or training from an organization. The vast majority of mentors (71% ) work informally; the remaining 29 % are formal mentors.

Some of the reasons people want to mentor include:

• A desire to help young people succeed: 82 percent.
• A desire to make a difference in someone’s life: 76 percent.
• A desire to give back to the community: 43 percent.
• Religious and spiritual reasons: 27 percent.
• Someone helped when he/she was young: 22 percent.
  

In Best Practices in Mentoring, at the Institute of Physics, the most successful mentor is described as someone who:

• listens 'actively'
• questions and finds out what is important to others, exploring their skills, aptitudes and aspirations
• challenges assumptions and acts as a sounding board
• helps someone less experienced to learn by allowing minor errors, but will endeavour to prevent them making major errors
• recognises when the mentee should be identifying a need for other sources of help (such as from an institution), and
• has appropriate training and experience for the role
  

The most successful "mentee" is described as someone who:

• understands that the role of the mentor is to challenge and encourage but not to provide answer
• guards against becoming dependent on the mentor
• approaches each mentoring session fully prepared and interested
  

A successful mentoring partnership depends upon families, youth and mentors :

• establishing ground-rules are established at the beginning of their relationship, that may include timings and format of mentoring sessions, the expected length of the commitment and methods of communications, and how involved a parent will be
• and discussing the responsibilities and expected outcomes of the mentoring relationship, including any specific results the mentee hopes to gain from the relationship, and what the measures will be for these.

Working together, both mentor and student can be mutually enriched by their experience.